October 27, 2006

October 27, 2006

Watching and reading the recent Washington punditry, whether in print or on television, is a depressing spectacle. Almost all—Charles Krauthammer is the most notable exception—have somehow triangulated on the war, not mentioning why and how in the B.C. days they sort of, kinda, not really called for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. For some the Road to Damascus was the looting or Abu Ghraib, for others the increasing violence. Still more now say the absence of WMD did the trick.

But almost none of the firebrands of 2003 speaks the truth behind the facade: They supported the war when it looked like few casualties and a quick reconstruction and thus confirmation of their own muscular humanitarianism—and then bailed along the way when they realized that wasn’t going to happen and the unpopular war might instead brand them as “war mongers”, “chicken-hawks” or just fools.

Instead of that honest admission, we get instead either cardboard cut-out villains of the “my perfect three-week war, your screwed-up three-year occupation” type—a Douglas Feith, Gen. Sanchez, or Paul Bremmer—or all sorts of unappreciated and untapped brilliance: from trisecting the country to “redeploying” to Kurdistan, or Kuwait, or Okinawa?

October 27, 2006

October 27, 2006

JON HENKE, George Allen’s campaign blogger, responds to criticism of the Jim Webb novel story in my post this morning by emailing:

Mr. Reynolds,

Something to remember about the Webb/book story — here’s Keith Olbermann talking about the sex scenes in Scooter Libby’s book:

“we have beaten the hell out of Libby for this, and deservedly so. If a Democratic White House official had written this book, his head would be on a pike somewhere.”

Well, now a Democrat HAS written that kind of book. So it’s funny to see how quickly the Democrats have rediscovered the irrelevance of fiction writing. If voters are not bothered by Webb’s work, fine….but it’s not a ‘smear’ to cite the public record that Webb himself talks about in commercials, interviews and on his campaign website.

It’s true that the Dems have gotten mileage out of steamy Republican novels in the past. Though “steamy” isn’t quite the term I’d use here.

Amusing line from Althouse’s comments, where there is much interesting discussion:

Republicans who write about sex and murder are depraved, fucked-up sickos who write about grisly repressed fantasies. Democrats who write about sex and murder are artists, flowering the world with beauty and challenging our perceptions.

Christ, don’t you people understand how it works?

Yes. Kind of like this: “When Republicans appeal to rural, white, socially conservative voters, they are Neanderthals. When Democrats do it, they are shrewd tacticians.” I’m beginning to sense a pattern here!

I hate to break it to you, folks, but the military — especially the Marine Corps, the service that Webb knows best — is largely composed of macho young men with foul mouths and an unhealthy obsession with all things sexual. It’s a giant locker room. No one who’s been in the naval service beyond boot camp — especially back when Subic Bay was still open — hasn’t heard a story or two about a Filipino stripper dicing a banana with her vagina. . . . I admit that I don’t see the point of some of the rather bizarre, homoerotic scenes mentioned in Allen’s press release. But they’re presented entirely out of context. And I’ll bet that if I read those books, I would see the point.

He’s voting for Webb, though he was before. I think that Allah captures both sides of this story best, with two passages. First: “Have we actually reached the point where Senate seats now turn on the sex scandals of fictional characters?”

But also: “If George Allen had written this book, not only would the left be going berserk, they’d be circulating lists of characters in his other books whom they suspect of being gay.”

October 27, 2006

October 27, 2006

They really liked this Panasonic, which looks like it would be a cool videoblogging tool, too. I have to say, though, that for videoblogging the video capabilities of digital still cameras are looking pretty good. My little Sony pocket camera shoots 640 x 480 30fps video, with shockingly good sound. And I shot all the video for this piece using still pocket cameras — a Sony and (for the underwater parts) an Olympus.

There’s even one that shoots in HD (1280 x 720 pixels). That’s overkill for videoblogging, of course, but it’s sort of cool.

October 27, 2006

Maybe I’m racially insensitive, but I don’t get the uproar over the ad in which a hot chick says she met Harold E. Ford, the Tennessee Democrat running for the U.S. Senate, at a Playboy party and asks him to call her. A Vanderbilt expert on political advertising says it “makes the Willie Horton ad look like child’s play.” Really? It’s worse for voters to think that beautiful women want to have sex with you that it is for them to believe that you let a dangerous criminal out of prison to commit rape and murder? I think Michael Dukakis would disagree. He could have benefited from this sort of slander, if anyone would have believed it.

I agree. As I’ve said before, I think the Playboy thing helps Ford more than it hurts him.

UPDATE: Reader Janice Lyons says it’s not about the bimbo:

By focusing on the blonde the Dems are either being really really clever, or are really really dumb.

It’s the WHOLE AD that has the bang. It is not only hilarious, it’s points to Ford’s positions (I assume, since I’m not a Volunteer), which when voiced in their implications, are pretty damning.

Perhaps by calling race! sex! – and – gasp! bimbo! they are trying to divert attention from the problem of Ford’s positions (the actual content of the ad, not his sex life) with [self righteous] indignation.

Surely more than a few people see the ad, snicker at the blonde, and wonder if Ford really does think they own too many guns, it’s no big whoop that the family farm which has now become a developer’s (and the tax office’s) dream can will be lost to the family because of property and death taxes, that people who produce stability in the society pay higher taxes, that the US should stop trying to slow down the nuclear train to hell, and that people committed to blowing up as many Americans and as many America ideas and things as they can should have the right to be treated as citizens, and better.

That’s what the Dems are really worried about. Or should be anyway. That’s the message of the ad the Dems are trying to distract from while “whining” about the bare shouldered blonde.

Well, of course, the complaints just caused many, many more people to see the ad. Smart? We’ll see.

And I think Dukakis would have picked up at least 3 states if it had come out that he’d partied with Playboy bunnies . . . .

October 27, 2006

The U.S. Department of Defense is now taking its requests for corrections public through a website known as For the Record (located at http://www.defenselink.mil/home/dodupdate/index-b.html). Here, the Department of Defense is openly calling for corrections from major media outlets, and even noting when they refuse to publish letters to the editor.

The most recent was this past Tuesday, when the DOD published a letter, that the New York Times refused to run, which contained quotes from five generals (former CENTCOM commander Tommy Franks, current CENTCOM commander John Abizaid, MNF Commander George Casey, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers, as well as his successor, Peter Pace) that rebutted a New York Times editorial. This has been picked up by a number of bloggers who have been able to spread the Pentagon’s rebuttal – and the efforts of the New York Times to sweep it under the rug – across the country.

They’ve got a long way to go on the information-war front, but at least they’re getting into the game.

October 27, 2006

There are hundreds of websites featuring dozens of professionally produced videos of violence against US forces in Iraq. Dubbed with loud monotonal music for an extra creepy effect, at the point of the attack, the filmers usually erupt into cries of “Allahu akbar!”

The US might film its own missions for forensic or debriefing purposes sure, but that is a far cry from reveling in them. So what might motivate someone to be so twisted as to film and celebrate death?

One answer: recruitment. . . .

This mobilization is real. It has tangible impacts. Look no further than what is now being called “the YouTube jihad.”

October 27, 2006

DIRTY PASSAGES IN JIM WEBB’S NOVELS: Not that big a deal to me — they’re novels — but I suppose the Foley business has given this sort of thing more resonance than it would otherwise have. That sort of blowback doesn’t seem all that unfair, though it’s just another indicator of how lame the Webb/Allen race has been ever since Macacagate.

UPDATE: Tom Bevan: “Given that Drudge is currently splashing the details of some bizarre, sexually explicit passages from Jim Webb’s books on his site, the first line of this big profile of Webb in today’s Washington Post is timely, but probably not helpful: ‘James Webb will tell you that he is first a writer, with several best-selling novels to his name.’ Oy. . . . It’ll be interesting to see how the mainstream media handles this story – if they cover it at all – and how the notoriously prickly Webb responds.”

This is nothing like Foley. I agree that the Foley attacks were blown out of proportion. But it’s also clear that Foley was a sexual predator. Jim Webb was writing about a remote, foreign culture. The two aren’t remotely comparable. Nor is it legitimate to say there’s some sort of “unseemliness equivalence” between chastising the GOP for Foley, and implying that Webb is a pervert because of passages from his books.

The scene everyone’s up in arms about isn’t remotely titillating or sexual. It depicts two Americans in an exotic and foreign locale. The penis-kissing incident involves a native man and his son in a remote, rural part of South Asia. It’s clearly scene-painting, and both characters are shocked and troubled by it, and return to it later in the book.

The genital-kissing custom, by the way, is fairly common in many parts of the world, including Southeast Asia. It isn’t sexual. Yes, it seems odd to Americans (there have been several cases where Asian
adults in America have been prosecuted for it — none have been upheld, with courts clearly finding the practice customary, not sexual) — and it seems clear from the book that Webb thinks it’s odd, too. It isn’t as if he made it up as part of some latent perversion.

It’s entirely likely that Webb saw this happen while he was in Vietnam, was struck by it, and is relaying what he saw in the book.

I wasn’t suggesting that Webb is some sort of pervert — as I said, it’s a novel — but only that this would be likely to play badly. I like Webb, and my earlier impression of Allen as a bit of a dim bulb has been amply borne out by this campaign. Nonetheless, when you get down in the mud, as the Webb campaign has certainly done, you get dirty too. And if Imus thinks it’s bad, then it’s likely to hurt him.

MORE: Reader Brian Wiegand emails:

Radley Balko is mostly right. I interviewed Jim Webb this morning and he said that he saw the genital kissing while he was in Thailand, not Vietnam. As Balko says,it was not at all a sexual act. This story is being grossly misrepresented, much like the story about the noose that used to be in George Allen’s law office was. What was that you were saying about getting down in the mud?

October 26, 2006

MORE ON BILL MOYERS: Rick Byrne of Public Affairs Television sends a letter from Bill Moyers on the Beisner matter, which I had previously mentioned in connection with Bill Moyers’ legal threats against a blogger. Click “read more” for Moyers’ letter. I’ll just note that getting your story out this way is a lot smarter than trying to intimidate bloggers with legal threats, as Moyers has already done. Still, we want to reward people for learning . . . .

October 26, 2006

October 26, 2006

But as a wise woman once said: “The Colonel is dead, and here we are still enjoying his chicken.” Extra points if you can spot the source.

UPDATE: A bunch of readers got this right away (I suspect them of Googling, though that’s bad form on questions like this). But reader Tim Tighe was first. It’s from this classic motion picture. Beauty, eh?

October 26, 2006

THE BEATINGS WILL CONTINUE UNTIL MORALE IMPROVES: And here I thought that was just a joke — but no!

Siberian scientists believe that addiction to alcohol and narcotics, as well as depression, suicidal thoughts and psychosomatic diseases occur when an individual loses his or her interest in life. The absence of the will to live is caused with decreasing production of endorphins – the substance, which is known as the hormone of happiness. If a depressed individual receives a physical punishment, whipping that is, it will stir up endorphin receptors, activate the “production of happiness” and eventually remove depressive feelings.

Russian scientists recommend the following course of the whipping therapy: 30 sessions of 60 whips on the buttocks in every procedure. A group of drug addicts volunteered to test the new method of treatment: the results can be described as good and excellent.

Or maybe they just pretend to feel better so the damn whippings will stop . . . .

The book draws heavily on Tainter’s The Collapse of Complex Societies, which is a terrific book — though I recall reading it a few years ago and concluding that Tainter’s lessons didn’t suggest that our society was in particularly great danger. Homer-Dixon feels otherwise. There’s also a troubling reference to Stalin-apologist Eric Hobsbawm merely as an “eminent historian” — talk about a guy who can argue for “the upside of down,” — but overall I think the book’s pretty interesting. It’s certainly an example of the phenomenon I described in my column:

As with some of the righty books from the 1990s, there’s a curious push-pull here: Though these are warnings of catastrophes to come, there’s a sense that to some extent those catastrophes involve society getting what it deserves for its sinful ways, perhaps coupled with an opportunity for purification in the wake of the crisis — with the virtuously prepared having the upper hand, of course.

October 26, 2006

KIMBERLY STRASSEL looks at the Ford/Corker race: “The Democratic Party has been aware of its weaknesses on social issues and national defense for years, but with Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi in charge, it has refused to budge from a liberal stance that resonates mainly in New York and California. Mr. Ford has shown that voters elsewhere will respond to Democrats who aren’t afraid to really talk with them–and vote with them–on God and guns.”

October 26, 2006

October 26, 2006

THE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM is that the New Jersey gay marriage decision is good for the Republicans. But the futures markets don’t show a lot of movement. What do you think? It’s time for another InstaPundit reader poll:

October 26, 2006

Mark Warner looked to be the strongest Democratic contender for President in 2008 except for Hillary Clinton. We’d been slated to interview him when he decided not to run, but we thought that decision was interesting enough in its own right to justify an interview. We talk to Warner about his choice to bow out, about the state of politics today, and about what he’ll do next. We also discuss anti-terrorism, the Democrats’ problems with flyover country, and the importance of alternative energy, including nuclear power, to address oil pressure and greenhouse emissions. Plus, an interruption by Jimmy Carter!

You can listen to the show directly — no downloading needed — by going here and clicking on the gray Flash player. You can download it directly by clicking right here, and you can get a lo-fi version for dialup by clicking here and selecting lo-fi. Better still, you can subscribe via iTunes and get future episodes automatically.

October 26, 2006

MORE RIOTING IN FRANCE: Gateway Pundit has a roundup, and there’s more at No Pasaran! “The most spectacular incident took place at 1AM between Bagnolet and Montreuil. A gang of 10 pistol wielding hooded youths boarded the bus. One of the assailants placed his gun on the side of the bus driver’s head and ordered him to get out of his seat. The gang commandeered the bus, drove it a short distance and torched it in an neighboring suburb.”

October 26, 2006

October 26, 2006

The exercise was part of a two-day, statewide public-health drill. Called Fluex 06, the drill assumed that a pandemic flu, or a strain for which the public has little protection, was moving through the state.

Local hospitals were full and medical supplies were running low, according to the simulation. State officials declared a mock emergency and ordered the vaccination of as many people as possible, as quickly as possible.

In the Fredericksburg area, health officials participated in the exercise by scheduling a real-life, drive-through flu clinic. Those interested were told to roll down their car windows and roll up their sleeves for a free shot. The state Health Department supplied 400 doses of flu vaccine.

Officials chose the Stafford center for its large parking lot. The Stafford Volunteer Rescue Squad offered one of its bays, and the Stafford Sheriff’s Office supplied four officers to help with traffic.

October 25, 2006

I do not support the decision today reached by the New Jersey Supreme Court regarding gay marriage. I oppose gay marriage, and have voted twice in Congress to amend the United States Constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage. This November there’s a referendum on the Tennessee ballot to ban same-sex marriage – I am voting for it.

I voted against the Tennessee provision, and would have voted against a Federal constitutional amendment, too. I checked Bob Corker’s site but couldn’t find anything on this issue.

Meanwhile, note that the GOP seems to be misrepresenting Ford’s stance on gay marriage. The Ford campaign seems to have done the same thing to Steve Cohen. Hell, I should have run, just so there’d be somebody who’d say he’s for it.

October 25, 2006

Just thought you’d be interested to know that Steve Forbes pushed the Iraqi Oil Trust idea this morning in his keynote speech at the Better Management Live conference in Las Vegas. In the middle of a talk about innovation in business, he took time out to endorse this “innovative” approach to stabilizing Iraq. Perhaps the idea is gaining momentum….?

Let’s hope, though it would have done more good back when it was first suggested.

October 25, 2006

UPDATE: Pieter Dorsman thinks the news isn’t as good as the Dow records suggest. I can imagine that to be true. But I can’t imagine successive Dow records just before an election getting this little attention under a Democratic President . . . .

October 25, 2006

THE FUTURES MARKETS ARE moving rapidly in Corker’s favor on the Tennessee Senate race. Ford’s had a less-than-ideal week, but it hasn’t been that bad. Is this because of the New Jersey gay marriage decision?

UPDATE: Related thoughts here. And there’s no similar movement in the Virginia race, which you’d expect if the NJ ruling were involved.

ANOTHER UPDATE: No similar movement in the New Jersey Senate futures, either. But Hotlineblog reports that the RNC is pumping $5 million dollars into the New Jersey race in response to this decision.

It began when state senator Cohen, on a fund-raising trip to Nashville, checked in with members of the Legislative Plaza press corps and delivered himself of some typically outspoken observations about what he — honestly or conveniently or both — saw as the drag on Ford’s senatorial campaign. Cohen saw Representative Ford’s “tremendous attributes” being overshadowed by the candidacy of brother Jake as well as by a speech given by Harold Ford Sr. in which the former congressman not only conflated a Harold Jr. rally with support for second son Jake but attacked Cohen in language that disturbed many who heard or read about it with its religious overtones.

“We’re from a Christian city here,” Ford Sr. had said at one point. “[Jake] doesn’t believe in legalizing marijuana. This man that’s running against Jake wants some sex shops running in downtown Memphis on a Sunday! That’s our religious holiday.”

After remarking on Representative Ford’s “tremendous attributes,” Cohen told his audience of Nashville media, “For him to come this far and to have the effort to overreach, I guess, and to have his younger brother run in the 9th District, I think has hurt his campaign.”

Further, in a reference to Ford Sr.’s out-of-town residences: “The Ford machine used to have a lot of foot soldiers. … The top brass has moved away from the foot soldiers. It’s hard to be in touch with your foot soldiers when you’re on Fisher Island [Miami] or in the Hamptons.”

That prompted a press release in Representative Ford’s name, which said in part: “Now, it appears that state senator Steve Cohen and Mayor Bob Corker are singing from the same Ford family attack hymnal. I know that Bob Corker is attacking my family because he has come up short on ideas and answers in this campaign. I didn’t know that … Cohen was suffering from the same problem.”

The congressman’s statement also accused Cohen of support for gay marriage, amnesty for illegal immigrants, legalization of marijuana, and “a cut-and-run strategy in Iraq. . . .

“I really think that if Harold Ford Jr. had run with me on a ticket, it would have been a ‘dream team,’” Cohen mused last week in Nashville.

October 25, 2006

A HUMAN RIGHTS CAMPAIGN STAFFER turns out to be behind the Foley affair website, according to this report. GayPatriot is unhappy: “I think the HRC needs to come clean and fully explain to those of you who give them money exactly what the hell they are up to. This entire matter has put every gay American into a bad light by equating child predators with being gay. The HRC has a responsibility to tell us what they know and when they knew it. They are now directly responsible for the anti-gay atmosphere that has emerged from the scandal that one of their own employees helped launch.”

October 25, 2006

October 25, 2006

GAY MARRIAGE UPHELD IN NEW JERSEY: The Supreme Court of New Jersey rules: “Denying committed same-sex couples the financial and social benefits and privileges given to their married heterosexual counterparts bears no substantial relationship to a legitimate governmental purpose. The Court holds that under the equal protection guarantee of Article I, Paragraph 1 of the New Jersey Constitution, committed same-sex couples must be afforded on equal terms the same rights and benefits enjoyed by opposite-sex couples under the civil marriage statutes.”

UPDATE: Having (very quickly) skimmed the opinion, it seems the Court is allowing that civil unions might be good enough, so long as they’re comparable to marriage in terms of benefits, but it seems to leave open the possibility that only marriage that’s called marriage might be good enough.

I agree with the result (that is, I favor gay marriage as a policy matter). The reasoning is okay (based on a cursory reading it seems consistent with this approach), though the 90-page opinion shares a flabbiness with earlier cases like Goodridge. I think, though, that changes like this are better made through legislative than judicial means, and that this may well benefit the Republicans substantially in the coming elections, as people like my reader Steve White who worry about judicial activism are given a new reason to go to the polls and vote for anti-gay-marriage initiatives.

Brendan Loy: “As a proponent of gay marriage, I’m happy with the result. As one who hopes the Democrats take back at least one house of Congress, I am fearful of the backlash. But perhaps the possibility of ‘civil unions,’ as opposed to ‘gay marriage,’ will blunt the backlash somewhat.”

The opinion allows that something not called “marriage” might be enough, but it pretty clearly leaves open the door to hold otherwise later. And the concurrence/dissent says: “I can find no principled basis, however, on which to distinguish those rights and benefits from the right to the title of marriage, and therefore dissent from the majority’s opinion insofar as it declines to recognize that right among all of the other rights and benefits that will be available to samesex couples in the future.”

It thus seems that this isn’t really a “third way” approach to gay marriage. This is a clean win for gay marriage advocates, not a partial victory.

MORE: Eugene Volokh has further thoughts, and observes: “this decision, whether you like it or not, seems to be an illustration that the slippery slope is a real phenomenon.”

MORE STILL: Dale Carpenter, having reviewed the opinion, says it’s an example of how unstable the middle ground is:

New Jersey ran into trouble because, having started down the path to full equality for gay individuals and couples through a variety of state statutes and judicial decisions, the state could not give any good reason why it should continue to differentiate. For example, the court noted, the state has adopted a domestic partnership system that gives gay couples a list of rights also given to married couples. But yet the domestic partnership system does not extend other rights of married couples to these same-sex couples. What’s the basis for granting a select list of the rights but not the others? . . .

The whole case, then, shows how unstable a middle ground can become in the hands of an aggressive court. The slope on that middle ground seems much more slippery for courts, which demand what they regard as principled reasons for any distinction, than it is for legislatures, which may refuse to budge for no reason other than that the votes aren’t there to do more or because of simple fiat.

I believe that Justice Scalia has made just that point. Carpenter concludes: “The question then is, having closed the gap with respect to all rights in marriage, what basis could there possibly be not to close the remaining gap with respect to equal status in marriage?” I agree that the “civil union” approach is unlikely to last in light of this decision, which carefully doesn not rule out an equal-status requirement.

October 25, 2006

VERY INTERESTING DISCUSSION of what we’ve done wrong in Iraq and what we ought to be doing now — with the observation that simply getting out would be worse than “a dozen Somalias” — in a letter from Iraq over at Best of the Web.

October 25, 2006

Isn’t the apparent shocking admission of liberal media bias a sign that the media thinks it has done its job and ended Republican control of congress? I seem to remember the same round of mea culpa’s after Clinton’s election in 1992. The media admitted after a Dem was safely ensconced in the Whitehouse that maybe they had been a little too hard on Bush and Reagan and needed to try to be more supportive of the government in the future and less suspicious of the government. Now with the Republican Congress in trouble two weeks before the election we get the NYT admitting it was a mistake to out the NSA funding surveillance and now this admission that maybe the networks are too liberal. To me this just the media seeing that its job is done now trying to reposition itself in the center and salvage a shred of credibility to be used in 2008.

October 25, 2006

During my three embeds in Iraq’s vicious Anbar Province, I’ve been mortared and sniped at, and have dodged machine-gun fire — all of which has given me a serious contempt for the rear-echelon reporters. When I appeared on the Al Franken Show in May, after my second embed, it was with former CNN Baghdad bureau chief Jane Arraf — who complained about the dangers of being shot down by a missile while landing in Baghdad, and the dangers of the airport road to the International Zone (IZ) . . . and how awful the Baghdad hotels were. . . .

CBS News cameraman Paul Douglas and freelance soundman James Brolan were blown up by an improvised explosive device (IED) while accompanying CBS correspondent Kimberly Dozier, herself critically injured. They were embedded with the 4th Infantry Division. So were ABC anchorman Bob Woodruff and his cameraman, who were critically injured by an IED. Time correspondent Michael Weisskopf had his hand blown off trying to toss a grenade out of his Humvee when he was embedded with the 1st Armored Division. These, not the hotel-bound credit-claimers, are the journalist-heroes of the Iraq War.

October 25, 2006

I teach at Carnegie Mellon University, and yesterday I noticed that there is a hand sanitizer dispenser at the exit of the computer cluster where I’m teaching this semester.

It seems like a great idea to me, especially since colleges and universities are some of our great unsung incubators of disease. Every few months, we send students all over the country (or world!) to collect all sorts of germs, bring them back together to see what kind of new germs we can breed, and then send them back out into the world again.

Yes, there’s always a fresh round of colds, etc., after fall, Christmas, and spring breaks. I suspect that finding places to interrupt the spread of this kind of thing would do a lot of good.

October 25, 2006

Miller is 100% right. The ad was a total loser. It might actually have been the kiss of death for Allen, sorry to say. Being totally honest, if I were a Virginian, I’d vote for Webb because of that ad alone. And there are many like me. I know many people in Newport News (My good friend was the Rabbi there for five years until two months ago, when he moved to Cleveland). They naturally vote GOP, but they certainly care more for the military than a political party. If they heard that Republicans are bashing Webb for defending military culture, or for being against women in the military, they won’t even think twice about supporting him. Glenn, there’s nothing to talk about. Allen can only pray people somehow forget about it.

October 24, 2006

SO AS A RESULT OF THE JOHN BIRMINGHAM BOOK MENTIONED BELOW, I got an Amazon recommendation for a rather different book, How to Become an Alpha Male.

Er, aren’t all bloggers Alphas, by definition? I can’t say much about the book, but from looking at the reader reviews I learned that there’s such a thing as “the seduction community,” described in an entirely un-ironic and unself-conscious sense (more on that here) and that there’s good advice to be had on body language:

such as not be hunched over with your eyes cast downward

It’s hard to argue with that! Another book I wouldn’t have noticed, and another “community” I would have missed, if it weren’t for the magic of collaborative filtering — and its occasional misfires.

I hope this measure fails. I certainly will vote against it. It’s as wrong as those antiquated laws forbidding interracial unions.

It doesn’t take a genius to realize this is a hot-button issue politicians dearly love. But that’s what I find so intriguing. This proposal oughta be hands-off for die-hard liberals and die-hard conservatives alike.

Liberals should view a ban on gay marriage as mean-spirited and discriminatory. Conservatives should view it as intrusion by the government into citizens’ private lives.

Indeed.

UPDATE: Reader Steve Galbraith writes:

You got me on this one. How is not having the government recognize gay marriage as being equivalent to a heterosexual marriage intruding into someone’s private life? Who’s private life is being affected?

If the government simpy says, “You may marry whomever you want, we just won’t recognize it”, the state is simply staying out of private matters.

If on the other hand government recognizes same-sex marriage, isn’t that bringing a private matter into the public sphere? Isn’t it taking a private matter – gay marriage – and having the state regulate that relationship?

I’m essentially agnostic on this issue. Were it up for vote in a statewide referendum, I’d probably vote in favor of it. But it does seem to me that in doing so I would be using state coercion to force those who didn’t recognize it as a lawful marriage to do just that.

Recall Berlin’s negative and positive liberties. Isn’t having the state recognize marriage an example of positive liberty – a dangerous state action – as opposed to a negative action.

Well, ideally I’d take the state out of the marriage business entirely and make it a matter of contract. But if the state is in the business of recognizing marriages I think it needs a good reason to discriminate. That some people say “Yuk” is, as with Leon Kass’s concerns about science, not a good enough reason in my opinion.

That said, I think it’s a terrible mistake to call those who oppose gay marriage “bigots” and the like, given that the majority of Americans feel that way. I think that attitudes will change with time, and that’s why I’m against efforts to lock-in current attitudes.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Steve White emails:

On your post concerning the Tennessee ‘anti-gay’ marriage amendment: perhaps these amendments wouldn’t be so popular, passing with 70 to 75% of the popular vote in states that have had referendums, if the people of said states could trust their courts not to intervene. Given the notoriety attached to states where a district or supreme court has suddenly discovered a right for gays to marry, a fair number of voters may have decided that it is they or their legislators who will make this decision in their states and not their courts, thankyouverymuch.

Well, there has been some judicial activism here, but not that much. And these amendments don’t simply restrict change to the legislative realm — they generally ban it, period.

October 24, 2006

MEGAN MCARDLE: “Watching Sky News is weird, because half the news is about America, and half of that is wrong. . . . Maybe tomorrow I’ll take in some British actors doing bad impersonations of Americans.”

October 24, 2006

The price of gas at the pump has tumbled since midsummer. Unemployment has fallen to its lowest level in more than five years. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average has finally returned to its glory days of the late 1990’s, setting records almost daily. . . .

But Republican candidates do not seem to be getting any traction from the glowing economic statistics with midterm elections just two weeks away.

The economy is virtually nowhere to be found among the campaign ads of embattled Republican incumbents fighting to hold onto their House or Senate seats. Nor is it showing up as a strong weapon in the arsenal of Republican governors defending their jobs from Democrats.

“I don’t know of another election cycle in which the economy was so good, yet the election prospects for the incumbent party looked so bad,” said Frank Luntz, a Republican strategist. “If something goes wrong, Republicans are to blame. If something goes right, Republicans don’t get credit.”

October 24, 2006

Jet Blue wanted to squeeze just a few more working hours out of its pilots but it needed the facts to prove that a change in FAA regulations wouldn’t lead to a spate of crashes and flight errors. Its solution? Hook up 50 30 odd pilots to monitoring devices and make them illegally work in excess of FAA protocol in a makeshift clinical trial. Not only does such an experiment violate every ethical law in the book, it also makes hundreds, if not thousands, of passengers unwitting participants in a clinical trial that could possibly end in a fireball on the tarmac.

October 24, 2006

October 24, 2006

ANDREW SULLIVAN RESPONDS to my earlier post on Ford and Corker: “The difference between the GOP and the Dems on gay issues nationally is vast, as Glenn knows.”

Unlike Sullivan, I’m not a “single issue voter” on gay issues. But I wonder if that’s true about the Democrats vs. the Republicans. As is widely recognized in the blogosphere, Sullivan has sided with the Democrats over gay marriage. But what has he gotten for that?

Are there any Democratic candidates in contested races who are pushing gay rights and gay marriage? I can’t think of any. Certainly, as I noted before, Harold Ford isn’t among them. And Hillary Clinton isn’t beyond reproach: “The executive director of the Empire State Pride Agenda gay rights group has described Sen. Hillary Clinton as ‘a complete disappointment.’ . . . Clinton opposes same-sex marriage but supports civil unions between members of the same sex. During her husband’s administration, she supported the Defense of Marriage Act.”

And it’s not the GOP that’s circulating a “list” of gay Congressional staffers in the hopes of getting them fired.

As I say, I’m not a single-issue voter on gay rights. But Sullivan clearly is. So what, exactly, are the Democrats actually offering in exchange for his rather vehement loyalty?

In TN and VA, Democrats Ford and Webb say they oppose gay marriage. Webb supports civil unions, though, and he plans to vote against Virginia’s so-called “Super-DOMA,” which, according to gay rights activists and some legal scholars, would make it harder to establish civil union-type arrangements. Ford supports the Tennessee constitutional amendment. He also supported the FMA in the House.

Not overwhelming evidence of the Democrats’ superiority on this issue. Meanwhile, Corker is better on the Second Amendment, at least.

October 24, 2006

October 24, 2006

PETE DU PONT: “Republicans deserve to lose, but what happens if Democrats win?”

Brendan Loy doesn’t care — like Bill Quick, he belongs to the teach-’em-a-lesson crowd: “I’ll be voting for the Democrat for my local, hotly contested House race. (Heaven help the Democrats if Pelosi breaks her anti-impeachment pledge, because I’m depending on that, and they’ll lose my vote for a long, long time if they’re lying to me.)”

October 24, 2006

October 24, 2006

ROB HUDDLESTON writes that national coverage of the Ford / Corker race isn’t very good: “Be careful about how much credence you give the national media regarding our race here in Tennessee. Heck, be careful about other states’ races, too. They are doing a poor job in covering these races because they don’t know what is going on on a daily basis in the states. The national media’s inadequacy has been magnified by the rise of the blogs, for sure. That’s why they interview bloggers, as a way of catching up on what has been going on in each race.” Well, at least they’re trying.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Sean Braisted has the new Ford campaign ad, and comments: “There in lies the strength of Ford as compared to Corker. When Ford wants a new ad or message out there, he can do it himself relatively quickly and effectively. When Corker needs a message put out there, he needs to get someone (Fred Thompson, Ed Bryant, his Mom) to do it for him. It helps Ford that he is his own best spokesman.”

October 24, 2006

Plus, a book I ordered for my nephew, John Birmingham and Dirk Flinthart’s How to Be a Man, which looks to be chock-full of practical advice. Birmingham is probably better known to the blogosphere as the author of Weapons of Choice (involving the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Hillary Clinton) and Designated Targets, but How to Be a Man isn’t science fiction.

October 24, 2006

Personally, I see journalists at the New York Times first and foremost as fellow citizens with whom I share obligations. The notion that they don’t see me the same way causes me a lot of concern.

In World War II, Ernie Pyle found and publicized flaws in our military — but he did it in the context of supporting the larger war effort. In Vietnam, Joe Galloway spent his first night in the field as a journalist manning a machine gun emplacement.

That’s not what we ought to expect from our media today. We don’t need journalists as cheerleaders (not that Pyle or Galloway ever were) or as combatants. But I do know that a lot of us would feel better about the criticism leveled by the media at things the U.S. is doing if we were sure that — in the event of an ambush by enemies determined to kill some of us — they wouldn’t just see it as a good story.

UPDATE: Okay, with 3000 votes, it’s showing 55% expecting the GOP to retain both houses, 39% expecting the GOP to lose one house, and only 6% expecting the Democrats to take both. This seems to take a pretty favorable view of the GOP’s prospects, but it’ll make an interesting test of John Podhoretz’s thesis.

October 24, 2006

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